Never has so much been written about man and culture as in
recent years. The problem is so relevant to the present day
that it comes up constantly for discussion at national,
regional and international levels. In the West some people
predict a tragic future for both man and culture; others are
inclined to optimism, though their optimism is often tempered
with anxiety. The backcloth for these speculations is an
outward wellbeing and even an unprecedented flow of material
goods. Nevertheless the gloomy predictions prevail.

They present a marked contrast to the philosophy of man and
culture in Marxism, which radiates a bright view of the future.

Any discussion of the phenomenon of culture calls for an
analysis of the related concept of civilisation. Neither can
be understood outside their contradictory unity.

The concept of civilisation.
Society and its history constitute the most complex and
multi-dimensional process. And if we are to make any sense of
this highly developed piece of reality we shall need a wide
range of concepts. Human reason, which for centuries has been
nurtured by this seething polyglot reality, has evolved
numerous concepts and
categories to explain the world historical process. For a long
time idealist views prevailed, but dialectical materialism,
with its materialist understanding of world history, has
evolved a new and comprehensive system of concepts, categories
and principles that enable us to reveal the essence, sources,
mechanisms and driving forces in the development of society.

Historically the idea of civilisation was formulated during
the period of the rise of capitalism in order to substantiate
the principle of historical progress, the
necessity for the replacement of the feudal system, when the
claim that it was
God-given no longer satisfied social and
philosophical thought. Instead it was maintained that history
was motivated by man's vital interests, his desire to realise
the principles of social justice and legal equality. Thinkers
became concerned with the future of world civilisation as a
whole and this prompted them to create a different paradigm of
philosophical thought, particularly when the victory of the
Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 launched a new stage in
the development of civilisation—development with a
humanist orientation on the national and social emancipation
of mankind, on distribution of the wealth of society according
to work, and on freedom of the popular will in managing the
affairs of state and society.

On the other hand, the sharpening of social contradictions in
capitalist society led some philosophers to believe that the
"sun" of social progress was about to set. This idea was
most fully expressed in Oswald Spengler's well-known book
The Decline of the West, which stimulated
such thinkers as Pitirim Sorokin and Arnold Toynbee to produce
their own socio philosophical patterns of the global
historical process. Sorokin attempted to reduce recurrence in
the historical process to recurrence in the spiritual sphere
by generalising the corresponding spiritual phenomena into a
concept of "types of culture" (culture being treated as
synonymous with civilisa tion), while treating the historical
process as their fluctuation. According to Sorokin, the
sensate society that we know today is moving towards
inevitable collapse and this is connected with the successes
of science and materialism.
He sees the salvation of humanity
in the victory of the religious and altruistic principles,
which should be active and creative. According to Arnold
Toynbee, there is no single unified history of humankind. We
are concerned with a score or so of unique and self-contained
civilisations, and all of them are equally valuable in their
own peculiar way. In its development every civilisation passes
through the stages of emergence, growth, breakdown and
disintegration, after which it is replaced by another. At
present, according to Toynbee, only five main civilisations
have survived: the Chinese, the Indian,
the Islamic, the Russian, and the Western. Civilisation's
driving force is the "creative minority", which leads the
"passive majority". In the stage of disintegration the
minority imposes its will on the majority not by authority but
by force. The doctrines of Toynbee and Sorokin are both
idealist, in the sense that they tend to ignore the
development of the material life of society as the basis of
the historical process and to absolutise the spiritual
element. On the other hand, these doctrines do attempt to
revise the mechanistic doctrine of the purely linear progress
of society, to evolve an alternative to the conception of
"Eurocentrism".

Marxism went to the root of the problem by showing that the
development of society proceeds in successive stages,
pinpointing the distinctive features of each stage, and thus
evolving the category of the socio-economic formation. This
placed our understanding of history on a scientific,
dialectical-materialist basis, which is the only feasible
one. The category of the socio-economic formation is crucial
for interpreting both the history of mankind and its specific
phenomena, such as culture and its interconnections with
society and the individual.

However, this category does not account for the whole
categorial apparatus of socio-philosophical thought. The
infinitely rich texture of history cannot be reduced to
various types of formation and the histories of many nations
do not fit into any formational typology. Some nations never
passed through the slave-owning formation, others
"bypassed" capitalism, others are a mixture of tribal,
feudal, capitalist and even socialist relations, while yet
others exist in a state so indefinite as to defeat even the
most subtle socio philosophical typology. In view of this
complexity of the historical process, Engels noted that no one
specific formation had ever exactly corresponded to its
definition. History is constantly moving forward but not in a
straight line; it zigzags, it turns back and all these
different directions are taken in an extremely unsteady
rhythm. The arrangement of the socio-economic formations in a
straight line is a scientific idealisation, which the
ideological critics of Marxism misinterpret as a desire to
provide a theoretical basis for the idea that all the roads of
history lead to one goal, and that all the past has been
merely an exhaustingly long preparation for the ascent to the
sunlit peak of universal happiness. But mankind's desire for
social equality is indeed a recurring phenomenon. From time
immemorial it has provided inspiration to the best minds of
humanity, but this does not make the vector of history a
straight line. Each people takes its own road. Some
civilisations achieve a great and brilliant efflorescence and
then, for some strange or even known reason
perish, as was the case with the Mayas; other civilisations
soar like a firework into the heavens, shedding their
brilliant light on everything around them, then fall back in a
shower of historically insignificant sparks. Yet others move
slowly, retaining their uniqueness, protected from change as
if by embalmment.

In Marxist literature there is no unanimity about the meaning
of civilisation. Some thinkers are inclined to dismiss the
concept altogether, holding that it adds nothing to the broad
concept of society. Others identify civilisation with the
socio-economic formation, which is also a way of denying the
necessity for the concept of civilisation. I believe that the
correct standpoint is to regard civilisation as a special and
very important category, as something which coincides with the
category of the socio-economic formation in some respects but
also differs from it essentially in others. The concept of
civilisation "works" particularly well when world history
is thought of in global terms, as something integral, and the
future of mankind is regarded from the standpoint of unity and
diversity. Historically civilisation defines not the early
dawn of humanity, not its childhood or even adolescence, but
its youth and maturity, the established forms of
society. Basing
himself on Lewis Henry Morgan's book
Ancient Society, Frederick Engels
followed
him in observing that society began with the stages
of savagery and barbarity. These were the first gleams of
sociality. And they were superseded by civilisation, the
centres of which arose in various continents, some in Africa,
others in Asia, others in Europe, and yet others in
America. From this point we can begin to discuss the stages of
civilisation and its corresponding forms.

The concept of civilisation has more than one
meaning. Generically it denotes the historical alternative to
the savagery and barbarity, which we mentioned above.

Secondly, civilisation may be taken to mean a relatively high
stage in society's mastery of the forces of nature, a
relatively high level of organisation of social relations and,
in general, all aspects of social existence and culture and
also a uniqueness of material and spiritual life of society in
the framework of the nation, the state unit or the region. In
this sense it embraces the overall motion of human history,
the global achievements of society, the world standards
evolved in the development of culture, society, technology and
the productivity of labour, and also, of course, all the
specific features of regional, national and ethnic forms of
social existence.

Thirdly, civilisation may be thought of as a limitless universal
phenomenon embracing not only terrestrial but also
extraterrestrial forms in their assumed endless diversity,
denial of which would be tantamount to acknowledging the
greatest of all divine miracles. The universe is eternal and
infinite. It cannot, in principle, contain only one
terrestrial civilisation. If it did, civilisation would not be
something natural and functioning according to certain laws,
but a unique, unnatural, entirely fortuitous exception to the
logic of the life of the universe and would thus have to be
regarded as something miraculous. This was intuitively
perceived by many ancient thinkers, who acknowledged a
countless number of worlds inhabited by rational beings. It
would be only natural if human civilisation, having penetrated
outer space, sooner or later came into contact with
extraterrestrial forms of civilisation.

The present age is characterised by a growth of integrating
trends and the acceleration of development. Uniqueness
preserves itself by overcoming its own hypertrophy. Even the
least developed countries are being drawn increasingly into
the orbit of modern civilisation. Interrelations are becoming
closer and there is greater exchange of historical experience
between one nation and another. All this goes to show that an
unprecedented world-historic community of mankind is in the
process of formation and requires a joint coordinating reason,
not centrifugal forces that generate trouble spots all over
the world and bring grief and suffering upon millions of
innocent people. More intensely than ever before humankind
expects enmity and strife to be replaced by order and
harmony. As yet, however, everything is in a state of
contradiction. The victories of technology are often won at
the cost of human health. Even the pure light of science with
its radiant truths may also contain destructive
rays. Discoveries and inventions, all the brilliant fireworks
of the human intelligence, may burn up the very torch of
reason.

While acquiring boundless wealth, although in extremely
unevenly distributed forms, mankind has also created the real
possibility of its own destruction. The imperialist threat of
an annihilating nuclear, laser, chemical and bacteriological
war has as its scientific and technological premise the
achieve ments of modern civilisation. How is it that the great
forces of civilisation imply not only benefits for humanity
but also the possibility of a completely opposite effect?
Where can we find a realistic solution to this seemingly
hopeless contradiction? This predicament has been
ideologically expressed in various philosophical,
sociological, artistic and religious works whose conceptions
tend to be more and more often of an apocalyptic nature. The
scientific answer to these problems is given by Marxism and
the real solution to them is to be found in the achievements
of the countries of socialism.

The wise statesman is one who understands the overall tendency
of the historical process, the law-governed tendency of
society to organise itself in such a way as to eliminate the
very possibility of some people building their happiness on
the unhappiness of others, to liberate everyone ·from
social inequality, from the unjust distribution of wealth,
which results in some people smothering themselves in luxury
while others are deprived of the merest necessities.

Civilisation is characterised not only by the level of
production of material and spiritual goods that has been
achieved, by a certain stage in the development of social
relations, by freedom of the individual and of the nation as a
whole, but also by the possibility, the
potential for progress that is inherent in the social system
it has evolved. The higher the civilisation, the richer and
more energetic its potentials, the more rational and viable
its orientation on the future. But not, of course on the
"pie-in-the-sky" principle.

A society that has been doomed by history lacks these vital
potentials and its line of development declines, like that of
the Roman Empire, for instance. Empires in general tend to
resemble the dinosaur. With its gigantic body and
disproportionately small head, it became less and less capable
of rationally organising its own life activity and therefore
was unable to compete in the grim struggle for existence. In
the extinction of this clumsy giant among animals we may
justifiably perceive a symbol of the inevitable end of
imperialism in general.

Imperialist expansion, the desire for world domination in all
its forms, the growing menace of war, the accelerating pace of
scientific and technological progress and the accompanying
ecological disturbance, threaten civilisation with a serious
crisis. A vicious circle has arisen from which only the
responsible forces of the collective wisdom of humanity can
save us. It is not enough now for statesmen to think on the
scale of the interests of one state. What humanity now needs
are minds that think in terms of the planet as a whole.

The paramount consideration today is the preservation of
peace, which has become the cause not of just one nation but
of all nations, and responsibility for peace rests on the
shoulders of every rationally thinking person and all social
groups and classes of society. The defence of peace is the
highest aim of the peoples of the socialist countries and this
fact is enshrined in their constitutions.

The philosophy of culture.
Civilisation depends on culture for its development and
existence and, in its turn, provides the conditions for the
existence and development of culture. Historically culture
precedes civilisation.

Usually culture is understood as the accumulation of
material and spiritual values. This is a broad and largely
correct interpretation but it leaves out one main fact, and
that is the human being as the maker of
culture. Culture is quite often identified with works of art,
with enlightenment in general. This definition is too
narrow. Nor can one agree with the notion that culture
embraces only the sphere of intellectual production, even if
we take this sphere to include the whole of science. Such an
interpretation leaves out a great deal. For example, the
culture of physical labour, administration, of personal
relationships, and so on. Reducing culture to the intellectual
sphere results in an elitist approach depriving culture of its
nationwide significance. But any person may make a
contribution to culture, and not only artists, writers, or
scientists. The concept of culture is an integral and
all-embracing concept which includes various phenomena,
ranging from the cultivated blackcurrant bush to La
Gioconda, and methods of administrating the
state. Culture defines everything that man does, and how he
does it, in the process of self-fulfilment. Culture is the
method of the self-realisation of the individual and society,
the measure of the development of both. Various fields in
knowledge— ethnography, archeology, history, literary
criticism and so on—study the various spheres of
culture. What we are interested in here is not the numerous
spheres in which cultural activity of various peoples,
nations, ethnic groups, social groups and individuals have
manifested themselves, but the essence of culture, i. e.,
culture as a philosophical category.

We may gain some idea of the meaning of culture by turning to
the etymology of the word, which can be traced back to the
Latin cultura, deriving from the word
colere, meaning both to "cultivate"
and to "worship". It is a curious fact that the very
origin of the word culture contains the
wisdom of the people's understanding of culture as the
worshipful cultivation of something, particularly the
land. The word "culture" was thus from the beginning
related to good action. And action usually means assimilation
of our world in some form or another. It may therefore be said
that culture is a kind of prism, through which everything
essential to us is refracted. Every nation, every level and
form of civilisation, and every individual attains knowledge
of the world and a mastery of its principles and laws to the
extent that it masters culture. The forms of culture are a
kind of mirror that reflects the essence of every enterprise,
its techniques and methods, and the contribution which it
makes to the development of culture itself. In this sense man
himself is a phenomenon of culture, and not only of nature. If
we may attempt an analogy, it may be said that culture is the
opened, read and
understood pages of the "book of life", pages which when
assimilated by the individual become his selfhood.

Culture is not merely a matter of skill raised to the level of
art, but also a morally sanctioned goal. Culture manifests
itself in ordinary consciousness and everyday behaviour, in
labour activity and the attitude that one adopts to such
activity, in scientific thought and artistic creation and the
vision of their results, in self-control, in one's smile and
manner of laughing, in love and other intimate relationships,
which the individual may elevate to unexpected heights of
tenderness and spiritual beauty. The truly cultured person
shows all these facets in every manifestation of his
selfhood. Culture is characterised by the vital ideals of
humankind, of the individual, the social group, the class and
society as a whole. The more significant these ideals, the
higher the level of culture.

In what forms does culture exist? First of all in the form of
human activity, which is generalised into certain modes or
methods of its realisation, in the sign or symbolic forms of
the existence of the spirit, and finally in palpable material
forms, objects, in which the individual's purposeful activity
finds its embodiment. As something created by human beings,
culture is at the same time a necessary condition for
humanity's cultural existence and development. Outside culture
the individual cannot exist as a human being. As water
permeates soil, culture permeates every pore of social and
individual life. When studying one or another culture We
usually think of it as something relatively independent. In
reality, culture exists as a historically evolved system
comprising its objects, its symbolism, traditions, ideals,
precepts, value orientations and, finally, its way of thought
and life, the integrating force, the living soul of
culture. In this sense culture exists supraindividually, while
at the same time remaining the profoundly personal experience
of the individual. Culture is created by mankind, by the
nation, the class, the social group and the individual. The
objective forms in which culture exists are the fruit of the
creative activity of the people as a whole, the masterpieces
of geniuses and other great talents. But in themselves the
objective and symbolic forms of culture have only a relatively
independent character; they are lifeless without man himself
and his creative activity. All the treasures of culture in
their palpable material form come to life only in the hands of
a person who is capable of revealing them as cultural values.

In defining civilisation we stressed that it arose
historically after culture and on its basis. The two form what
is to a great extent a unified social formation, but their
unity is internally contradictory and may in some respects
become diametrically
so. For example, nature accepts everything from culture but by
no means everything from civilisation. A generally cultured
attitude to nature presupposes the rational use of its forces
without violating their natural harmony. Such forms of the
spiritual life of society as science, literature and art are
facts of culture. They organise and ennoble human feelings and
serve as the plastic means that connects the reason and the
heart in a single whole, thus eliminating the disharmony that
often arises between them. The general cultural significance
of science is enormous. It raises society and human beings to
a higher level of spiritual development, thus increasing the
power of reason. In science, however, a fact of culture is,
above all, what is directly or indirectly aimed at improving
the higher intellectual principles in man and society. And one
certainly cannot describe as culture or the making of culture
any activity which is deliberately aimed at destroying the
achievements of reason and of human hands. Science is a
beneficial phenomenon of the mind. But how much evil it brings
and may yet bring in unscrupulous hands!

Civilisation is organically linked with the advance of
technology. But the main thing in technological progress is,
or should be, its humane orientation. It is important to know
what a certain technology gives to man and what it takes away
from him. The face of culture bears the imprint of humanity,
and anything that is against humanity is not culture but
anti-culture. For example, such highly technical sophisticated
means of murder and violence as war, torture, and
imprisonment, have nothing in common with culture, although
they occur in civilised societies. Can the brutalities of
despotic regimes be described as a phenomenon of culture? Can
the means of mass annihilation be called a material reality of
culture? It would be a great sacrilege to recognise such
things as cultural realities, even when acknowledging the
inevitability of their existence. All this is a creation of
civilisation, but not of culture. This contradiction between
culture and civilisation may also be found in the individual,
the self. The adjective "cultured" presupposes something
more than the acquisition of the ability to solve complex
intellectual problems or to behave properly in
society. Culture in the true sense presumes the observation of
all the formal elements of socially accepted standards not as
something external but as an integral part of the personality,
of consciousness and even subconsciousness, of its
habits. These standards then acquire a true and lofty
spirituality, which is something more than obedience to
certain rules. The culture of both the individual and society
has various degrees of sophistication.

Every educated person may at times have a good opinion of
himself. He may feel that he is cultured, and even
intellectual ly advanced. But true culture and intellect are
something very elevated and also very profound. They imply not
only a subtle, sophisticated cast of mind developed through
education but also a restless conscience, a bitter sense of
discomfort when one is pursued by doubts as to the truth or
falsehood of a situation. They imply concern and compassion
for the fate of the people. An intellectual person knows that
intellect is not an aim in itself but the dedication of one's
life to others, the altruistic service of truth, goodness and
beauty. All this is what we mean when we say a person is
cultured. And we also mean the ability and courage to take
responsibility for things that may have no direct bearing on
ourselves but affect other people, and not only our near ones,
but the people in general, the whole of humanity.

People are not born cultured; they become so through education
and upbringing. Every individual learns to be cultured.

The objective and symbolic forms of culture are not implanted
in man, they are merely given to him as the subject for
study. In order to
master them, to make them his own, to
incorporate them in the structure of his personality and thus
cultivate that personality, a person must enter into special
relations with them through other people and subject himself
to what is called upbringing, an active process that involves
both the educator and the educated in culture making, without
which the life of contemporary or any other society would be
inconceivable. Upbringing or education is itself
historical. At first, in the earliest stages of human society,
as with small children, education was simply imitative of the
elementary actions of others. But this process becomes
educative inasmuch as it takes place under the control of
educators. With the passage of time it becomes more and more
complex. Until, finally, such forms arise as school and
college education and training on scientifically evolved
principles. At the same time the boundlessly rich school of
life as well as self-education also play the part of educator.

Without education and self-education there could be no
culture, and certainly no cultural progress. It is education
that relays cultural values from one generation to another and
helps to multiply them. The constant accumulation of cultural
values places increasingly complex demands on education as a
most essential form of the creation of culture.

Culture is a social phenomenon that embraces not only the past
and the present, but also the future.

Like everything else in life, culture is historical. The
primitive horde and the tribal society and all the subsequent
forms of organisation, all the stages of civilisation are
characterised by their own peculiar way of life, perception of
the world, and levels of consciousness. The culture of all
peoples throughout history is permeated to some extent by
religion. This is expressed in various rituals, forms of
worship, in deities, in art, in philosophy and even in
science. It is hidden in the very fabric of
language—even an atheist, for example, may say several
times a day "goodbye", which originally meant
"God
be with you". Without some fundamental knowledge of the
history of religion it is impossible to understand our human
biography, the biography of the human race, and to become a
cultured person generally. For example, primitive society was
full of animist, magic and mythological beliefs and this left
its imprint on the whole system of the life, thought, emotions
and interrelations of people and their relationship with
nature.

The ancient Orient is characterised by an urge to achieve
complete union between man and nature, the extinction of the
self in nirvana, understood as the highest level of the
existence of energy. An intuitive integral knowledge of the
world and of human nature permeates the whole of human
existence and the spiritual life of human beings. This is a
kind of knowledge in which philosophy, art, religion, science
and social psychology are all intrinsically merged. The
philosophy of the ancients was steeped in an awareness of the
cosmic element and its exponents thought in terms of images
which were plastic and almost geometrically integrated; and
this was expressed in science, philosophy, art and everything
else. The Middle Ages had a special type of culture related to
the desire to achieve a personal
absolute—God. Medieval
culture is a culture of religious spirituality and the
mortification of the flesh in the name of this spirituality
with its orientation on the heavenly kingdom as the highest
ideal of earthly existence, to which all the spheres of the
life of society are subordinate. When capitalism came into
being, everybody began to claim the right of free
manifestation of his creative ego. The whole mode of human
existence changed. The standards of culture also
changed. Everything was subjected to the judgement of human
reason and everything that failed this test was
rejected. Society was rife with individualism, calculation and
pragmatism.

Socialism has brought different ideals and standards of
culture that are permeated with a profound and comprehensive
humanism, as expressed in the maxim: everything for the
benefit of man and everything in the name of man. The freedom
of every person is seen as an indispensable condition for the
freedom of all. This is the truly humane principle of life and
standard of cultural development that permeates the whole
world outlook of socialist society.

These are very general outlines of the historical types of
culture and are not intended to draw strict dividing lines
between them. It should also be stressed that to this day in
many parts of the world huge masses of people on our planet
adhere, in varying degrees, to some kind of religious belief
and this is true not only of "simple folk" but also of
highly educated people. At the same time growing numbers of
people are estranged from this form of culture. The striking
thing is the vitality and social power of religious culture,
which provides a kind of spiritual integrating principle for
whole nations and also for various social groups within one or
another nation. This extremely complex social and
psychological phenomenon needs investigation in the context
both of world history and the present day.

The dominating role of certain forms in relation to others is
characteristic of culture. In the Middle Ages religion clearly
played the dominating role; its values were placed higher than
anything else. The religious-philosophical consciousness is
the dominant form of culture in the Orient. Literature and
music were the prime factors in all Russian culture of the
19th century, just as, a little earlier, philosophy and music
played the dominant role in Germany. The development of
culture does not follow a straight ascending line. It is beset
with contradictions, that can be both beneficial and harmful,
and signal decline as well as achievement. The wisdom of the
people, folk wisdom, for example, has amassed a great wealth
of empirical discovery connected with healing. But how much
has been lost or passed unnoticed or deliberately ignored
through the "ignorance of the wise"? The rediscovery and
rehabilitation of what is reasonable in folk culture but has
been "tarnished" is also a contribution to culture, and a
very important one.

The contradictory nature of culture finds expression also in
the fact that every culture has progressive, democratic and
antidemocratic, reactionary, regressive tendencies and ele
ments. This is expressed in Lenin's idea that there are two
cultures in the national culture of every class-divided
society. The expression "mass culture" is today extremely
popular in the West. It is mostly used with a tinge of scorn,
meaning something "watered down for the majority". But
the concept of mass culture may also be understood
positively. Socialism has made culture accessible to the
masses, to millions of ordinary people, who previously
vegetated in a state of ignorance and illiteracy. Today the
peoples who have shaken off colonial oppression are vigorously
and with all their strength striving towards the heights of
modern culture.

What is imposed or implanted under the guise of "mass
culture" in the capitalist countries has a political and
ideological implication—the reinforcement of the power
of the bourgeoisie.

The term "mass culture" becomes negative when the masses
are not raised to the level of real culture, when
"culture" itself is refabricated to suit the primitive
tastes of the backward sections of the population and itself
declines, degenerates to a level so low as to be an affront to
all real cultivation of the senses. The mass of the people
with its great fund of folk wisdom is presented with stupidity
in the guise of culture and the sacred majesty of true
culture's historical mission is insulted in the process.

If cultural progress may be defined as the growth of
spirituality both in individuals and society as a whole, its
regress is expressed in a lack or decline of such
spirituality. And this is not compensated by material
wellbeing. In the developed capitalist countries the ordinary
person is sur rounded by an abundance of consumer goods, but
society as a whole is in the midst of a moral crisis. Crime,
drug addiction, mental sickness and even suicide are on the
increase.

In the bourgeois world the further progress of civilisation
goes hand in hand with a decline in its spiritual values. This
was pointed out and expressed long ago in a morbidly acute
form by Nietzsche and Spengler.

According to Nietzsche, the whole of European culture had for
long been in a state of mounting torment and tension, which
was carrying it to its destruction. European culture,
he
thought, was thrashing about, violently, convulsively like a
flood seeking an outlet, with no thought of its own actions
and even fearing to consider them. While acknowledging the
multiplicity of local cultures, each of which was passing
through its life cycle and dying, Spengler maintained that
civilisation was the dusky end of culture, its ossified
body. Why were two such positive concepts, expressed in such
fine words, so sharply contrasted? Both thinkers, horrified by
the crisis they observed in the world of capital, were
painfully aware that certain destructive principles had arisen
and were gaining momentum in civilisation, which both produced
cultural values and put them at risk of total
destruction. What Nietzsche and Spengler failed to see,
however, was that the destructive principles were not inherent
either in civilisation or culture, but in the character of the
socio-political relations of the society they were
studying. In many respects politics determines the vector of
the forces of both civilisation and culture.

It is generally known that a disproportion very often arises between
the level of civilisation, particularly its technico-economic
reality, and the level of culture that has been
achieved, and that this disproportion may become
paradoxical. The times of the oil lamp and the wooden plough
were graced with brilliant achievements in art, literature and
philosophy. We have only to think of the great cultures of
ancient Greece and even more the ancient Orient, the age of
the Renaissance, and of Russian culture, which in conditions
of serfdom astonished the world. This does not mean, of
course, that beneficial urges of the mind require difficult
circumstances, although there is a modicum of truth in this
notion. Great works of art have indeed often been created in
very hard conditions, as though they required some kind of
resistance, a kind of "purgatory" in order to test the
strength of their all-conquering power. But this in no way
suggests that the difficulties themselves give rise to
greatness. Difficulties are not its "parents" but merely
its stern "examiners"! By no means all nations who are
known for their backwardness in the technical and economic
spheres have created masterpieces of world cultural
significance. Here there is a mystery which demands a
solution.

At one time cultures tended to be extremely self-contained,
closed. In the course of their comprehensive historical
development they became more open to all kinds of influences
and a process of interaction of cultures took p lace. Life
evolves increasingly flexible mechanisms for this interaction,
which helps to raise the whole culture to a higher
level. Despite their uniqueness, the originality of the subtle
fabric of any given culture, whose threads go back into the
distant past, the various types of culture are in principle
comparable, and a dialogue of mutual understanding can, and
does, take place between them. Culture in its individual and
socio psychological expression is also characterised by the
means with which it assimilates other cultures and its
relation to them. Indifference or even hostility to the unique
aroma of "alien" cultural values indicate a low level of
development of one s own culture. Today one may observe a
tendency towards the flowering of national cultures, one feels
the great potential of ethnos. One may assume that further
human progress will take place in the form of a mounting
rational mutual enrichment of the cultures of West and East in
the historical sense of the term. The overall unity of the
general principles of human thought does not preclude a
certain historical specific in the philosophies and other
forms of culture. The predominantly analytical Western mind,
which dissects everything into parts with its scientific
scalpel, will be enriched by the intuitive integrating spirit
of the Orient, by borrowing its subtle truths and perceptions
and in its turn enriching them. World culture can only gain
from this beneficial and probably indispensable synthesis
which can be
achieved without dimming the unique and rich colours of the local
cultures.

The world of values.
The highest of all existing values is man himself, his sense
of dignity, his honour, his rights, his free thought, the
self-realisation of his capabilities. Man has at his disposal
the ocean of cultural values created by world history, and
also the boundless treasures of virgin nature, which he is
constantly using and enjoying as far as his own talent,
education and upbringing permit him. The value perception of
the world is a special dimension of reality in its application
to man and society. An unquenchable need to know the meaning
of life is a part of the very structure of the human ego and
this impels us to build and accept a certain system of values,
by which we must be guided in our thoughts, feelings and
actions, in our relation to the world and to other people. In
order to know what kind of a person we are dealing with, the
nature of this or that society, we must examine it very
closely and try to see what it is ruled by, what it worships,
what it admires and what it hates, what it is striving for and
what it avoids by all possible means. A system of values is
something that is deeply rooted in the structure of our
ego. Everyone knows how painful, even agonising any
"reappraisal" of values can be.

Things and processes, events, people, culture—all this
exists objectively, independently of us, but it may also exist
for us; we get to know the world, to admire it, we enjoy
something or use it for some purpose or other. A human being
cannot limit himself merely to stating the fact that something
has happened, is happening or will happen, i. e., to mere
knowledge of the fact as such. He always tries to understand,
or sense what meaning this fact has for him, for his life, and
also for the life of others, his own family, the life of
society, whether it bodes well or ill.

How is one to define the concept of value in philosophy? Value
is a fact of culture, and it is social in its very essence. It
is a functional and at the same time an objective-subjective
phenomenon. In themselves, things, events, outside their
relation to man, to the life of society, do not exist as
"categories of value". But as soon as a given reality
comes into the focus of human consciousness and is made,
transformed or modified by it, it also acquires a value aspect
of its existence, a meaning. For example, instruments of
labour, like everything else made by man, are a value which
both determines the mode of their production and demands that
they be used in a certain way. Life gives things certain
functions—ways of serving man with their natural and
man-made properties. This refers not only to humanised nature,
that is to say, to the whole massif of civilisation, but
even to the celestial bodies. They are in themselves
significant in the context of the universe, as is everything
in nature. But man's perception of them, the way he sees and
comprehends them, and his relation to them are already a
phenomenon of culture. The stars, for example, "speak" in
various ways to man. In various periods of his history, at
different levels of culture and even depending on his state of
mind and mood man has had different attitude to the stars. The
concept of value is correlative with such concepts as
"meaning", "use" or "harmfulness". Use may be
of a purely utilitarian character. There may be material or
spiritual values (clothes, home, implements of labour,
knowledge, skills and so on). We speak of the truth as a
cognitive value, which brings enormous benefit to human beings
and may also be used for evil purposes, as scientific truths
often are. People may be burned at the stake or condemned to
penal servitude for the sake of truth. History abounds in the
exploits of people who have done good for others. These are
moral values.

Cultural values are expressed in all kinds of symbols and
systems of symbols, which constitute a huge layer of our value
consciousness. An important place in this system belongs to
the names of famous people, of heroes, various kinds of
rituals, memorials, and so on. A person is born with
symbols. His whole conscious life is surrounded by them. He
dies with them. They accompany him on his last road. Symbols
pursue us even into "the other world". Historians are
known to have long disputes about the place of burial of some
historical personalities.

What is the secret of the beauty of virgin nature, of the
marvellous colours of the ever rolling sea waves, of the
purple sunset, the enchanting Northern Lights, the majestic
silence of mountains or the sounds of the forest? Is the
delight that a human being experiences when he perceives all
this confined simply to physical reality? Of course, not. And
what kind of a reality is this delight anyway? Here we need
not everyday language, but the language of music and art, the
world of images used by the poet and writer. In other words,
here we are speaking of aesthetic value.

When a person describes beauty, he characterises the aesthetic
reality through his sensations and emotions in inseparable
unity with the source that evoked them or, on the contrary, he
describes the objective source in its unity with the emotions
it has evoked in his soul. Nature speaks to us in our human
language. Any attempt to think of beauty by itself, outside
the objective-subjective unity is senseless. And this is true
of everything that concerns the world of values.

When discussing the objective content of value, we also
encounter a certain degree of convention. For example,
conformity to the rules of decency is a phenomenon of cultural
value. But what is considered decent depends on historically
shaped standards and customs.

Such are the logic and psychology of the value relationship
that an object discovered by our need may become an interest
while the opportunities for satisfying that need remain
extremely indefinite, problematic. This increases the
attraction of the object, thus raising its value. What do
people think of as valuable? And what is really valuable at
bottom? The measure of value is decided by the degree of
significance that a given object has for man and the
possibility of acquiring that object. Value is
historical. Take, for example, time. In the distant past time
was treated carelessly, people scarcely bothered to count
it. But now time is becoming increasingly compact and
costly. People value it more and more, it has even acquired a
commercial significance. In the age of the scientific and
technological revolution nearly every human action is timed
down to the last minute. The value that human beings attach to
time characterises in some degree the level of their culture.

When making an evaluation, particularly when facing a choice,
it is important to know how strong and lasting is the
"pleasure" or usefulness, the significance, including the
negative significance, connected with the attainment of what
is chosen. Whether it is easily or repeatedly attainable. As
most people know, there is what we call the phenomenon of the
effort spent: the more effort we have put into something, the
more valuable it is for us. We attach less value to what was
easily obtained. An act of heroism, involving self-sacrifice,
is highly valued precisely because it is significant for
society and there was a possibility of action of a quite
different order. The beautiful is beautiful only against the
background of the ugly. This applies equally to both moral and
aesthetic values.

The evaluating consciousness has its "yardstick" which it
constantly applies to things, events and actions, to
everything that concerns people. The ideal is the eternal
criterion in moral, aesthetic, political and other assessments
of events, things and people. One cannot, consequently, speak
of values outside their specific historical content, out of
the context of the type of civilisation, formation or culture
that is involved.

The phenomenon of value is linked not only with the
intellectual, the cognitive sphere, but also with the rich
sphere of human emotions. After all, it is our emotional state
that constitutes the decisive psychological condition of
happiness. Wisdom tells us that happiness—one of the
supreme values— does not depend on high social status,
power and riches or even intellectual ability.

Value is a "capricious thing". An object of value may be
admired, it may repel, it may arouse delight in some and
contempt in others, while others remain entirely
indifferent. Much depends on taste and taste is fickle and
subject to the "winds" of mood, of time and space. Taste
may be traced to the depths of the human soul, which is
moulded by the forms of culture which the individual has
absorbed.

Although values are concretely historical, there are some
which, like diamonds, are treasured at all times. These are
the values of wisdom, kindness, heroism, love of one's
parents, the love of a mother for her children, and respect
for one's ancestors, for one's country, for freedom.

To sum up, then, the concept of value expresses the properties
of things, phenomena, events, material and spiritual objects
satisfying, or capable of satisfying, certain needs and
interests of human beings and society. Value is that which has
meaning for man and society. All objects that are of interest
to human beings, and thus possess value, have only a
conditional value. Were it not for human inclinations, liking
and interest, and the needs on which they are based, these
objects would not have any value. Consequently everything that
brings or may bring satisfaction of human needs, beginning
from the most elementary, instinctive biological and material
needs, to the sophisticated demands of intellectual taste,
composes a world of values. This world also includes social
standards, which prohibit or permit, which tell us what is
allowable, desirable, obligatory or otherwise.

From the standpoint of its significance for the intellectual
life of a given person or even a nation it would be wrong to
contrast, for example, some scientific discovery or invention
to Christian or Buddhist ethics. These are different voices in
the single chorus of the spiritual life of humanity. And any
belittling of one or another voice is unworthy of a truly
cultured person, just as any discrimination against one nation
is in itself a belittling of human dignity as a whole, and
exposes the discriminator as a chauvinist and lacking in
respect not only for himself as an individual but for his own
nation. It is equally wrong to insist on any single standard
of value judgement for the cultural features of different
peoples.

But it is not enough merely to acknowledge the legitimate
right of every people to live in its own specific way. One
must also understand what this originality stands for. One
culture may raise its voice about something on which another
has nothing to say. And when even one voice is suppressed, the
harmony of the chorus of the world culture cannot be complete.

Endless contradictions arise in the system of socio
psychological stereotypes. The very concept of values in their
full sense presupposes a creative attitude to life and is
incompatible with standardisation of thought or behaviour. As
the highest degree of spirituality, in the sense of high value
orientations, culture consequently presupposes the breaking
down of stereotypes. And it is those who break them that are
the innovators. They create new values and, in so doing,
generate new stereotypes, a new style of thought and
behaviour. Hence there is a struggle, and this struggle
involves losses; immortality may sometimes be won through
premature death. Such has been the fate of the revolutionaries
of thought and action at all times and among all peoples.

Man in the system of culture.
Culture is the living process of the functioning of values in
the context of the existence of the individual and society. It
is the process of their creation, reproduction and use in
historically changing ways. Culture arose and is developing
together with society, creating an enormous tradition. The
history of culture is full of stagnant phenomena, rigid
dogmatic systems and conservatism, and also of revolutionary
innovations. The previous achievements of culture are not
parted from us. Their finest examples continue to live and
"work". No child can become a developed personality
without absorbing some of the treasures of culture. Culture
always survives those who have created it and that which it
originally served.

The first stages of a child's growth pass in the family, where
the elementary notions of what is good and bad in the moral
and aesthetic senses, of what is beneficial or harmful, are
acquired. This is where the foundation is laid of sensory
experience, the power of imagination and thought, and the
elements of emotional culture. Admittedly, the educational
effect of the kindergarten or the creche or the school, which
carry out a planned educational programme on the emerging
personality, are added to the experience of the family and
thus bring with them the experience of centuries, developing
in the child such qualities as curiosity, love of country, and
so on.

Modern civilisation has enormously expanded the opportunities
not only of human knowledge, of physical, biochemical,
physiological and intellectual forms of activity, but also the
various ways of developing them. Here an important role has
been played by such disciplines as psychology, neurobiology,
and medicine, which have long made humanity their study. They
are constantly perfecting their research techniques in order
to penetrate the mechanisms of life.

Great efforts are being made to find hitherto unknown human
reserves in the hope of discovering more effective ways by
which the nerve centres and other body centres can generate
and transform bioenergy and information, of scientifically
explaining the human ability to receive various radiations
from living and other objects and the information effects
connected with these radiations, which people have for long
observed but which have not yet been properly researched. The
advances that science has already made in penetrating the
secrets of the living organism with the help of instruments of
great resolving power give us hope and confidence that we
shall be able to understand many mysterious phenomena, and
that this knowledge may trans form the very style of man's
philosophical and scientific thought, his idea of himself and
his place in the universe, of the factors that control his
vital functions.

The sages of ancient India discovered astonishingly subtle and
profound psycho-biophysical connections between the human
organism and cosmic and subterranean processes. They knew much
that even today is beyond the ken of European scientific
thought, or that it ignores, often trying to conceal its
helplessness by asserting that oriental wisdom is mere
mysticism, and thus showing its inability to distinguish the
rational but not yet fully understandable essence from various
figments of the imagination. It is sometimes difficult for us
to penetrate the profound language of symbolic forms in which
this wisdom is couched, to get at the essence of that
wisdom. A full understanding of these complex problems can be
achieved only in the broad context of history and
culture. Historical experience offers us some instructive
lessons for the present day. If we look around thoughtfully at
the path humanity has travelled, it is not difficult to see
that the minds of the makers of culture have been guided by
the desire to achieve an understanding and a rational
transformation of the human being himself, his bodily and
spiritual organisation, the preservation and strengthening of
his health. Socio-political, philosophical, religious, moral,
aesthetic and all cultural efforts in general have tended
towards this goal.

The culture of the ancient Orient affirmed not only ideas of
man's dependence on the supernatural forces that were external
to him; there was also a tendency to cultivate certain rules
of behaviour in relation to these forces, including techniques
of training the body in order to regulate and perfect bodily
and spiritual processes. Various systems of exercises linked
with religious beliefs were evolved to change the state of the
mind, the consciousness, to achieve complete unity with the
universe, to become one with the energy of nature. These
techniques for influencing one's own organism through the
mechanisms of psycho-physiological self regulation and
control—techniques that are much in fashion
today—could not have survived for centuries and have
penetrated other cultures with a different ethnos, if they had
not contained some real knowledge of the most subtle and
hidden structural, energo-informational, neuro-psychical and
humoral potentials, which even now sometimes seem fantastic to
the analytical European mind, particularly when it is fettered
by stereotypes.

Oriental culture is full of beliefs about the role of the way
of life and its various components—breathing techniques,
diet, self-training, cultivation of the skin, physical
mobility, the ability to commune very subtly with nature,
acupuncture, cauterising, and other ways of influencing the
biologically active centres of the organism, herbomedicine,
diagnostics by means of the iris of the eye, pulse and
olfactory diagnostics, consideration of the position of the
earth in relation to the celestial bodies in medicine, the
time of year and day and of the properties of water in
relation to the state of the earth strata and the character of
its flow in connection with geomagnetic phenomena—all
this and much else has contributed to the great wisdom of the
Eastern peoples, the wealth of their culture and man's place
therein, their understanding of the mechanisms of regulation
of his life activity and vital potentials. Thus already in the
distant past, in the mists of mythological world views the
precious crystals of knowledge, tested by the experience of
centuries, of skills in beneficially influencing man's body
gradually accumulated. Flow could people in those far-off
times know so much without any experiments or apparatus about
the conditions and factors that regulate the course of the
vital processes and the character of the interaction between
man and nature, particularly the influence of the celestial
bodies, the sun and moon and various radiations proceeding
from outer space and the bowels of the earth!? And all this
was taken into consideration both in diagnosing and in
treatment! Does this not go to show an astonishingly high
level of culture that should arouse our admiration, gratitude
and desire to study! This knowledge could not have retained
its vitality if it had not again and again been confirmed by
practice.

With the liberation of cognitive thought from the fetters of
dogma, knowledge about man controlled by experiment and
logical analysis made substantial advance. We can see this in
the ancient schools of medicine (Hippocratus) and the work of
the Arabic middle ages (Avicenna), where the art of medicine
acquired such firm foundations that what was achieved in this
period has become part of the fund of present-day
prophylactic, hygienic, dietetic and other rules, not to speak
of physical culture. Behind all this lay many centuries of
popular wisdom about healing that was sometimes astonishingly
effective. Despite the barriers and profound scepticism of
blinkered thought, scientists are now taking a much more
sophisticated
interest in this age-old wisdom because they see that it
offers clues to the hidden processes in the human organism,
and ways of changing the internal and external forms of human
behaviour. On the basis of these clues, one can say that man's
whole moral-psychological make-up is shaped by the direct and
indirect influence of the conditions of his
information-evaluative perception of the countless diversity
of the environment, not only natural and specifically climatic
but above all that of the unique world of culture, which he
drinks in even with his
mother's milk.

In this information-evaluative perception a great significance
attaches not only to the boundless wealth of the concepts,
notions, feelings and ideals evolved by human experience but
also, and to a deeper extent, the values that have engraved
themselves in the memory and that are imparted to the
individual in childhood by his native culture—his native
language, music, songs, fairy tales, paintings, sculpture and
architecture, in a word, all the mental wealth of his own
people. The ethnic climate of the home culture forms certain
value orientations in the individual which make him a
representative of precisely that culture.

Every patriot experiences a feeling of pride in the depth and
inexhaustible wealth of his own culture. "... I am far
from admiring that which I see around myself; as a writer I am
irritated, as a person with prejudices, I am insulted, but I
swear on my honour that not for anything in the world would I
change my country or have a different history than that of our
ancestors, that which
God gave
us."[1]
Pushkin had an intense feeling of being organically linked
with
his own land, with the aroma of its history, with the
charm of its memorials—the creation of the minds and
hands of
his fathers and forefathers.

The sense of pride in the culture of one's ancestors, one's
people, plays an active role in forming the dignity of the
individual and reinforces his civic maturity, his sense of
responsibility for the future of his country. The memory of
one's gifted ancestors, who created the works of art and
literature and contributed to science, to social relations, is
a sign of a person's rich spiritual endowment, of his respect
for all the work of human hands, in which one can feel the
soul of their creator, his labour, his amazing skill and
perceptive observation. Literature has portrayed splendid
characters with a complete mastery of their trade, characters
who embody the talent of the nation, the sensitivity to beauty
and the urge for free creative work and inspired labour that
is inherent in any
people. This wonder at the people's creative gifts helps a
person to become a personality. Beauty is a source of moral
health and strength.

Just as a tree growing in a certain soil puts down deep roots
and drinks its juices, so a person from the moment of his
birth until he departs from this life is deeply and in every
respect rooted in the system of his culture and nourished by
the spirit of his own people, their customs and morals, their
sensory, emotional, intellectual and speech system of their
culture. A person is also nourished by the specific type of
natural landscape in which he lives and the memory of the
people, its symbols and specific genetics. And if by force of
circumstances a person is uprooted from the soil of his own
culture and all its unique integrity, this is always a painful
experience which may result in agonising forms of
nostalgia. Such experience has been vividly and fully
reflected in literature and music, particularly by those
artists who felt such pangs themselves. The innate
relationship with the native culture can be traced even to
certain genetic mechanisms, which carry a powerful life-long
programme, which is not only racial, national, but also family
and even individual.

The gap between Western and Oriental cultures and the
ignorance that exists on both sides often results in a
representative of one culture becoming overenthusiastic about
the other and forgetting his roots. For example, he may become
dedicated to yoga or karate without taking into account the
specific features of his own culture or the genetic and other
natural factors of his psychosomatic structure. This may have
a result that is directly opposite to what he
desires. Resorting to the East in search of exotic variants of
cultural values merely for the sake of the current fashion
usually indicates a low level of culture. It is like a person
chasing in the darkness of the unknown for something that he
does not know. Any culture, especially its very deep personal
stratum, has full significance only for its own conditions and
within its own limits. The ways of behaviour pertaining to one
system of culture cannot be thoughtlessly implanted in
another. This cannot always be done even with plants. The
culture of one's personal life, for example, with regard to
health lies not so much in the stubborn desire to prolong
one's genetically programmed life expectancy as in trying not
to shorten it by all the means, which unfortunately are only
too readily available in one's particular system of
civilisation, for example, in the form of alcoholism, drug
addiction, overindulgence in food, lack of exercise, and so
on. Culture is closely akin to wisdom, or that part of it
which is acquired by education. It involves the ability to
observe the rule of moderation in everything, and if this
moderation must be
violated in the name of a new culture, it should also be done in
accordance with reason and objective necessity.

* * *

The thinking mind of culture is philosophy. Philosophy is its
focus and, without it, no real culture of the mind or heart, no
true intellectual achievement is possible.

We have considered all the basic propositions of philosophy,
its principles, categories and laws, its cognitive, creative
and evaluative aspects. The author has sought to show how
through the conceptual apparatus of philosophy the whole
system of world-view, the methodology of cognition and the
transformation of the world and man himself is organised. In
concluding this book I have concentrated attention on the most
essential problem of all, that of man and his existence in the
world. We began with a definition of philosophy as a fact of
culture, as its nucleus, as its self-consciousness; our
concluding chapter has been an examination of culture as the
human factor, the highest of all values known to man.